Ireland – 16th September, 2008 – Training Links is an innovative support service developed by the Wheel to enhance the skills and employability of people working in the community and voluntary sector in Ireland.

Training Links offers funding opportunities to groups of organisations that chose to come together and work collaboratively to address their shared training needs as a Training Network. The current Training Links programme is running from September 2008 to mid 2010.

The Training Network is subsidised by The Wheel – with funding from the National Training Fund – over the period of the programme to develop and implement strategic, innovative and cost-effective training and development solutions for its members which they would be not be in a position to undertake as effectively on their own.

In addition to the provision of substantial financial subsidies to the Training Networks directed at training provision, this programme provides much-needed opportunities for sectoral co-operation and shared learning.

Applications are now welcomed for Training Links 2008-2010, an innovative grant programme developed by The Wheel to address the collective training needs of community and voluntary organisations in Ireland. Modelled on the approach developed by Skillnets Limited for the private sector Training Links encourages community and voluntary organisations to unite in “training networks” to identify shared training needs and to apply for a grant to address these needs. This approach offers participants significant cost efficiencies and other collective benefits.

Find Out More

Visit the Training Links site for further information:

http://www.wheel.ie/traininglinks

In March 2007, the then Minister for Tourism, Shaun Woodward MP launched the National Skills Strategy (NSS) for the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector in England.

The strategy called ‘raising the bar’ set out a Ten Point Plan to raise the skill levels of the sector’s current and future workforce. As the title suggests it also alluded to the massive opportunity that hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games presents for the sector.

Hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism is a large, exciting, diverse and dynamic sector. It has a global reputation for quality and innovation which are richly deserved. However, the sector could be achieving much more if employers were able to recruit the right people with the right skills and that they could hold on to a highly skilled workforce. This is what the strategy aims to achieve. There are no easy answers, but what the ten point plan presents is a clear strategy to tackle existing challenges and raise the skills and performance of the sector.

Hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism is a large and growing sector currently employing nearly 1.4m people in England. The sector is made up of 14 industries; these vary in size with the largest industry – restaurants employing over 430,000 people and the smallest – youth hostels just over 1,600. England accounts for 83% of all sector employment across the UK.

There are approximately 155,958 individual hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism establishments in England of which a third are pubs, bars and nightclubs and an additional third are restaurants. Small and micro businesses are predominant with 76% of establishments employing fewer than 10 people. However, in terms of the workforce the industry is highly polarised. For example, in hospitality 45% of employees work for 280 employers and another 45% are employed in small and micro businesses.

The sector is hugely important for the economy. In 2005, it accounted for 3.5% of the UK economy and was worth approximately £85bn. In 2005 the UK ranked fifth in the international tourism earnings league behind the USA, Spain, France and Italy.

Sector performance is being undermined by a poor skills record:

• 54% of managers do not possess the minimum level of qualification required for their position
• 63% of employers believe their staff’s customer service skills are not sufficient to meet their needs
• 40% of chefs do not possess a qualification at level 2, the minimum required to prepare and cook from scratch
• High labour turnover is resulting in a chronic recruitment crisis with 70 percent of recruitment being undertaken to replace existing staff
• Conservative estimates suggest that we are annually losing 590,640 people or 30% of the workforce
• This costs the sector £886m a year
• By 2012, the sector would have lost 4.1m people costing the sector £6.2bn.

Learn Skills has sellected the Hospitality Sector as one it will focus on to deliver quality web-based training in order to upskill and improve retention rates among staff.  As in Ireland, the Hospitality sector is essential to the success of the economy as a whole and web-based training can delivery increased value and consistency of delivery to both employees and management with the Hospitality sector.

Ireland – Tuesday, 5th August, 2008 – Cllr. Pat Whelan has called for the up-skilling of Irish workers after it emerged this week that 90% of new jobs created in the last 12 months were being filled by foreign nationals.

“This information from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) bucks the widely held belief, that many migrant workers will leave Ireland for other EU countries as our economy slows down, and that a large proportion of new jobs being created in Ireland will be taken up by the Irish workforce,” said Cllr. Whelan.

“The biggest share of new jobs are being created in high value sectors like financial and other business services, which grew by 26,300 in the year to the first quarter of 2008, and accounted for almost half (48.9%) of all jobs created. It had been assumed that Irish workers would take up most of these positions. But the CSO data indicates that foreign nationals will be recruited for a significant proportion of these new positions,” the Town Councillor continued.

“This trend needs to be fully researched by Government, as it could well be a warning about Ireland’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. There is no doubt that some of this increase in jobs uptake by migrant workers is due to their improving English language skills, leaving lower skilled jobs and moving up the value chain in line with their educational qualifications,” he said.

“Some of this is as a result of the increasing cost of childcare, as two thirds of the jobs created in the 12 month period were part time and 70% of these jobs were taken up by women. Migrant women have a lower dependency ratio and as a result are in a better position to take up employment.

“But the more worrying concern is that this is partly a result of the Government’s failure to properly re-skill our indigenous workforce to compete for these growth areas in employment. This trend cannot be ignored and it is imperative that the Government acts now, rather than sitting on its hands.

“More migrants moving up the value chain will certainly benefit the economy, but if it continues without being properly evaluated we could be skilling other economies to facilitate the transfer of jobs from Ireland. The Government has consistently buried its head in the sand on this issue, hoping that the economy will rectify itself. But the country needs clear solutions now that will benefit our economic potential in the future.”

Cllr. Whelan said the government needs to identify and up-skill vulnerable workers, expand training for those activities that still offer good prospects, such as professional services, health-related caring professions, IT, home energy efficiency technologies, and HGV drivers, use funding from the NDP and European Social Fund to fund a massive ‘eco-training’ programme for 10,000 skilled workers laid off from the construction sector, and ensure that changes to community childcare supports do not disadvantage those already in employment.

Source: Westmeath Examiner

Learn Skills, the Irish web-based training company that specialises in skills and compliance training, focused on upskilling employees and management has a comprehensive range of courses for anyone interested in upskilling to enhance their career prospects.